


Awake

by EmiAliceinWonderland



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake Character Death, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pynch Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7806793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiAliceinWonderland/pseuds/EmiAliceinWonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 4 Pynch Week Prompt ~ "Try me"//"I thought I lost you"//"I'm begging you."</p><p>Sometimes Ronan doesn't know what's reality and what's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is a Pynch week prompt so it was going to be Ronan having a nightmare, and then going over to Adam's place, and Adam comforting him about it, but uh...honestly Gansey just came onto the scene like "Emi, let me take this one." I'm sorry, he wanted to comfort Ronan. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't leave. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Adam’s eyes shift and change strangely, from grey to blue to a shocking electric green. A tiny flash of red, white, black, maybe? Then back to normal.  
  
He smiles, all teeth.  
  
Ronan feels sick.  
  
\---  
  
Ronan wakes up in a cold sweat, heart beating fast, his eyes are immediately drawn to the mask on his wall, his father’s wooden mask that had stuck itself horribly to Adam’s face before in his dreams. He wants to smash it with his own fist, but he can’t. He wants to bury it and pretend he doesn’t know what a Greywaren is.

 He wipes a few drops of moisture off his forehead with the back of his hand, throwing the bed sheets off him and getting out of bed. The wooden floor of Monmouth Manufacturing is cold but solid and comforting beneath his bare feet.

 He looks over to the mask on his wall again, apart from now it’s not on his wall. Someone is wearing it.

 Adam Parrish is wearing it.

 “Adam?” Ronan croaks out, squinting through the darkness to see the other boy, wondering how and when he got here. Had he been here with Gansey when Ronan had fallen to sleep?  
  
Adam doesn’t reply, Ronan’s heart quickens again in his chest, “Hey, Parrish, take that off,” he says with a little urgency in his voice, he doesn’t want his nightmare coming true, he doesn’t want to have to pry that _thing_ off Adam’s face again. Why would he even be playing around with in the first place?

 As soon as he thinks it, he realises he’s been tricked. Adam - or Dream Adam, rather, lets out a laugh. Not his normal sunshine laugh that brightens Ronan’s day and makes him warm inside. It is a strange cackle of a laugh. Something frightening and so abnormal it makes Ronan shiver.

  
“I’m not awake?” he asks tentatively, digging his feet harder into the floor of his bedroom to test the weight and solidity of it, but the wood is still there cold and firm and far too real beneath his feet. He realises with a shock of panic that he has no way of knowing if he is still dreaming or not.

 The Adam in front of him shrugs at his question, letting out another unnerving laugh, “I don’t know, _are_ you?” he asks back tauntingly, moving closer to Ronan.  
  
Ronan wants to back away, because this isn’t Adam Parrish as he knows him, and he wants that mask on his face, and he wants to wake and he wants this all to be over, over, over.

“You can’t hurt me, or him,” Ronan says, voice steely, after he’s taken a breath to push down his panic. The ‘him’ he is referring to is Adam. The real Adam is safely in his apartment above St. Agnes, asleep and nowhere near the mask or any of the devilish things in Ronan’s dreams. Right?  
  
The boy in front of him laughs again, so loud this time that Ronan flinches, “Try me,” he says wickedly.

 

\---

 

Ronan wakes up with a sore throat, he sits up in bed bolt upright, one hand clutched to his neck where he’d been silently screaming in his sleep. He blinks a few times, takes some deep breaths and sees the mask is still on his wall. Adam wasn’t here. It was a dream.

 He lays in bed for a few minutes, evening his breathing out by practicing big balloon breaths that Gansey had told him were good for panic attacks. Only when he’s calmed down a little does he notice a strange scent in the room.

 It is putrid, and strong, and getting closer.

 A metal acidity rises to Ronan’s mouth from the smell of it. He realises with a sudden horror that he is smelling fresh blood.

 He gasps, jumping up, and immediately flicking his bedside lamp on. He is frozen in shock when his room illuminates a body on the floor of his bedroom.

 He stares at dusty hair matted with drying blood, a pool of red dripping across his wooden floors. Out of the corner of his eye, the mask on his wall smiles, it’s eyes flashing red before stilling.

 “Adam?” Ronan chokes out, tears already stinging at his eyes.

“Adam, wake up, I’m begging you!,” he yells as he reaches down to shake the lifeless form on his floor.

 Ronan’s heart is beating so fast he’s surprised his body is still holding up. It’s beating against his ribcage so hard it hurts. He’s breathing so quickly he can’t breathe at all. He can’t get any air in. He can feel his lungs closing up. _Adam is dead. Adam is dead. Adam is dead. Adam can’t be dead. He can’t be dead._

 Adam is dead and Ronan can’t breathe.

 

\---

 

Ronan wakes up sobbing. He has not cried this hard since his dad died. He’s scared by the intensity of it, and the fear makes him cry even harder.

 He doesn’t know if he’s awake or not. He doesn’t know which reality is real anymore. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to --

 “ _Ronan_!”

Gansey’s voice cuts through his bedroom at the same time a light is switched on, so bright in the darkness Ronan has to squeeze his eyes shut tight for a minute, but the tears don’t stop coming.

 

\---

 Gansey has seen Ronan Lynch cry more times than probably any one else ever has. He doesn’t _like_ to show his hurt around Gansey if he can help it, but when he’s really truly upset he knows, and Gansey knows, that he feels safe to let it out around his friend if he needs to.

 Still. Gansey has never seen him sob quite this hard, apart from maybe the night his dad had died. The night Gansey had had to alternate between holding a screaming grief-stricken Ronan tight to his chest to stop him from punching the walls and breaking his hands, and sitting with him in silence, holding his hand if he’d let him, and trying his best to get his friend through the worst night of his life.

 “What the hell has happened?” he gets out once he’s shouted Ronan’s name enough times to get through to him. Ronan is looking at him now, his eyes are exceptionally red, but focused now, which is at least somewhat reassuring.

 “Was is a nightmare?” Gansey prompts, trying not to let the worry he’s feeling seep into his voice. He looks around Ronan now-lit room and sees nothing untoward, no night terrors bought back, nothing out of place.  
  
Ronan blinks at him, tears falling silently, but so fast they seem like they might never stop now.

 “I don’t know,” he whispers after a moment. “I -- I don’t know, Gansey. Am I awake right now? I woke up twice but I -- it was still a nightmare, and I -- _Adam_.”

 He lets out a tiny whimper. “ _Adam, I thought I’d lost you_ ,” he says hysterically, eyes clouded over.

 Ronan breaks off, breathing coming out too quickly again in quick gasps and tiny pants.

 Gansey reaches out a hand, sitting on the bed next to Ronan, and instinctively pulling the other boy into his chest to comfort him. Ronan lets him.

 “You’re awake,” he says softly.

 “You must’ve had a bad nightmare, but you’re awake now. I promise you’re awake. I’ve been up all night, haven’t slept, so this is reality, okay? I promise. You’re awake,” Gansey repeats, trying his upmost to keep his voice even and soothing. He rests his chin on top of Ronan’s short hair

 “I’m awake?” Ronan asks after a few moments of sucking in long breaths, clearly trying to calm himself. He sounds so like a little child, so innocent and scared and helpless that Gansey has to blink tears away himself.  
  
“You’re awake,” he says again, rubbing his palm up and down Ronan’s back.

Ronan gives a tiny nod against his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is more Gansey/Ronan than Pynch, oops. ALTHOUGH, I do hope it conveys how much Ronan cares about Adam. The reason he's so upset here is because he really, truly thinks that Adam died. He couldn't distinguish between his dreams and reality. 
> 
> <3 And also, just FYI I don't ship Gansey and Ronan romantically at all, I just think they have a very close friendship. Personally, I don't think it would be OOC for Ronan to cry in front of Gansey. My headcanon is that they just have a pact where Gansey never tells anyone about Ronan's breakdowns unless he has to, and the morning after they both pretend that the night before never happened.


End file.
